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PSYCHE : A STUDY OF THE SOUL

DR. HUNTINGTON'S BRIEFS.

i2mo, paper, 25 cents ; cloth, 50 cents each.

1. A Short History of the Book of Common

Prayer.

2. Popular Misconceptions of the Episcopal

Church.

3. The Spiritual House : A First Lesson in

Architecture,

4. Psyche : A Study of the Soul.

5. Four Key-words of Religion. (In Prep-

aration.)

6. Heart, Head and Hand in Confirmation.

(In Preparation.)

THOMAS WHITTAKER

Publisher

2 AND 3 Bible House, New York

PSYCHE

A STUDY OF THE SOUL

BY

WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON D.D.

ti

Rector of Grace Church New York

NEW YORK

THOMAS WHITTAKER

2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE

1899

^

Copy ^

Copyright, 1899
By THOMAS WHITTAKER

By Exchange
Aflliy and Navy Club
JAN^UARY 16 1934

HUBLBT PRIKTINO 00. L'T'D

TTPB8BTTIRS JIMC ELBOTROTTFBRS

TORK. PBNNA

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CONTENTS.

^be SouU

PAGB
I.

The Mystery of Her Origin 7

II.

The Methods of Her Discipline 23

III.
The Enemies of Her Peace 41

IV.

The Sorrows of Her Pilgrimage 57

V.

The Splendor of Her Destiny 71

The Cure of Souls 85

(5)

I.

THE MTSTEET OF SEE OEIGm.

THE SOUL
I.

THE MYSTERY OF HER ORIGIN.

When Edwin, King of Northnmbria, under
the influence of Paulinus, his queen's chaplain,
was considering whether he would or would not
relinquish the old paganism in which he had
been brought up and embrace the religion of
Christ, he called a council of his lords to dis-
cuss the matter. One after another the courtiers
gave their opinions, some for, some against.
Finally there stood up a noble whose name has
not come down to us, but whose spoken sentence
will last as long as the history of England con-
tinues to be read, so powerfully does its imagi-
native quality appeal to what is deepest in us.

" Man's life, O King," he said, " is like unto a
little sparrow which, whilst your majesty is
feasting by the fire in your banqueting-hall
with your royal retinue, flies in at one window
and out at another. For the short time that the
little creature remaineth in the house we see it,

9

10 P8YCSE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

and then it is well sheltered from the wind and
weather, but presently it passeth from cold to
cold, and whence it came and whither it goes, we
are altogether ignorant. Thus we can give some
account of our soul during its abode in the body,
whilst housed and harbored therein ; but where
it was before and how it fareth after, is to us
altogether unknown. If, therefore, Paulinus, in
his preaching will certainly inform us herein, he
deserveth, in my opinion, to be entertained."

Half of what this Northumbrian nobleman
expected of him Paulinus, preacher and theolo-
gian, was able to perform, but with respect to
the other half he must have felt himself practi-
cally powerless. For although for us Christian
believers, the window out of which the sparrow
flies fronts upon the sunshine, and we can follow,
for a little way, at least, the bird's journey into
light, on the side where entrance was affected
all things lie in shadow still, and no matter how
eagerly we peer out into the darkness, vision there
is none.

I have undertaken to speak to you at these
Wednesday-noon services during Lent, about the
Soul, the Mystery of her Origin, the Methods of
her Discipline, the Enemies of her Peace, the
Sorrows of her Pilgrimage and the Splendor of
her Destiny.

When I consider the far reach of these descrip-
tive titles, the length and breadth of the vast

TEE MYSTERY OF BER ORIGIN, 11

area they cover, I wonder at my own venture-
someness in endeavoring such a task. I can but
hope that the intense interest of the subject itself
may, in some small measure, make up for what
is sure to prove the insufficiency of my dealings
with it.

God and the Soul, — these are the two focal
points which determine the whole orbit of re-
ligion. Cardinal ISTewman in his History of his
Religious Opinions tells us, that although there
was a time, in his early life, when he questioned
and doubted about many things, there were two
points with respect to which he never wavered,
the reality of God and the reality of his own ex-
istence. Clearly there can be no religion worthy
of the name that does not presuppose, and not
only presuppose but somehow link together these
two, the Soul and the Author of the Soul. Tou
observe that I am using the word "Soul" in
the very largest and most comprehensive sense
which it is possible to attach to it. I am using
it in the sense in which David uses it when he
cries, " Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that
is within me praise his holy name." In starting
out upon the consideration of a subject it is all
important that a speaker and his hearers should
have a common understanding as to the meaning
of the principal words that are to be employed.

I venture, therefore, to emphasize my purpose
of invariably using the word " soul " in the inclu-

12 PSYCSE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL.

sive sense which makes it cover all in man which
is not distinctly and evidently outward and ma-
terial ; all that we miss, to put it negatively, all
that we take note of as being absent, as having
departed, when we look a dead man in the face.

It is the more necessary to insist upon this
largeness of definition because we so frequently
hear " the soul " spoken of as if it were sim-
ply a fractional portion of our inner being, one
pigeon-hole in a complicated secretary, one apart-
ment in a many-roomed house, one alcove in a
great library full of such places of studious re-
treat. The notion seems to be that this particu-
lar pigeon-hole, apartment, alcove has been set
apart for the reception of things serious and
solemn ; and that all interests other than serious
and solemn ones are else wise housed and provided
for.

But why in the world should we thus dwarf
and stint and cramp the Soul by the meagreness
of our definition ?

Christ says, " fear not them which kill the body,
but are not able to kill the soul." Evidently he
would have us infer that the destruction of the
body, precious as the body may be as the instru-
ment or organ of its tenant, would leave the soul
intact. Our own observation teaches us that the
loss of a limb has no effect whatever upon the reach
of a man's reasoning-powers, upon the strength of
his will, or upon the warmth of his affections.

THE MYSTERY OF HER ORIGIN. 13

When an arm is amputated no fragment of the soul
goes with it. The man may suffer the most ter-
rible mutilations but, if he survives them, he is the
same still as respects intelligence and character.
Nothing has been lopped from the soul, the in-
ner man remains of full stature as before. Why
should it be otherwise with the soul were the
entire body, and not one single portion of it to
be reft away? The soul, under such circum-
stances might not be able to express itself, per-
haps not able to be conscious of itself, until
newly-housed in such body as it should please
God to give ; but there is no reason to suppose
that it would permanently lose any possession,
power, faculty, appetite, sense or desire that was
native and natural to it. It would still be, what
it was before, the soul.

I am not forgetful, even though for my pres-
ent purpose I am obliged to slur it, I am not for-
getful of the important distinction which St.
Paul draws between soul and spirit. According
to his analysis of human nature, man is three-
fold rather than twofold ; body, soul and spirit,
rather than simply body and soul. There is
great value in this triple classification because it
enables us to sort the non-material part of us
according to grade and comparative value, as-
signing to spirit so much as is nearest to those
ranges of being which lie above us, and to soul
so much as is nearest to those ranges of being

14 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL.

which lie below us. God is a Spirit, we do not
speak of Him as a Soul ; on the other hand, the
animals have souls, not deathless souls, but souls.

"With this restricted use of the word soul
as indicating so much of our being as is non-
material, while yet confessedly inferior to a cer-
tain better and loftier component known as
spirit, we shall, in this study and meditation of
ours, have nothing to do. St. Paul, for a certain
definite purpose of his own, found the tripartite
division desirable and helpful; for us and our
needs the dual division (body and soul) which we
find sanctioned in the Psalms and in the Gospels
will suffice. We will let it be understood be-
tween us that we are using soul in the sense of
David's " all that is within man," and as compre-
hending and including all that St. Paul meant
when he spoke of soul and spirit.

And only consider, for a moment, how much
that same " all " covers and signifies. Every per-
ception, every sensation, every thought, every
feeling, every movement of the will, every long-
ing, every desire, every ache or pain, every
hunger, every thirst, every love or hatred, every
anger or joy, every shudder of dread, every
motion of pity, every sentiment of worship,
every thrill of admiration, every glow of sym-
pathj^, enters into the inventory of the soul.
Some of these experiences that I have mentioned
have probably been associated in your thoughts

THE MYSTEBY OF REB OBIGIN. 15

with the body rather than with the soul.
" Surely," you say, " such things as hunger and
thirst are bodily desires. What have they to do
with the soul ? " They have everything to do
with the soul, I answer. The body, as such,
cannot hunger or thirst, nor can it feel pain.
The dead body, the organism from which the
soul has taken flight does not suffer. It was the
tenant who felt the pain, not the house in which
the tenant dwelt. The promise that there shall
be no more pain does not mean that the souls of the
righteous, the souls of those who shall be accounted
worthy to attain that world, are to be incapable of
feeling pain, it means rather that the conditions
which cause souls to feel pain will have been re-
moved. The possibility of feeling joy would seem
to carry with it and to involve the possibility of
feeling pain. "We have not a High Priest who
cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmi-
ties, who has forgotten, that is to say, what grief
and pain and sorrow mean, yet has He entered
now where sorrow, grief and pain are not.

Setting aside, therefore, as unworthy, that
petty notion which would make of the soul a
sort of pious adjunct of the rest of man's facul-
ties, let us go on to consider the mystery of the
soul's origin. Doing so we shall find that no
matter how long or how laboriously we ponder
the subject, it is impossible to get beyond the
statement preserved to us in the second chapter

16 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

of the Book of Genesis, " The Lord God formed
man of the dust of the ground and breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a
living soul." This statement leaves many ques-
tions unanswered which we should rejoice to see
answered, but there is one point which it indis-
putably asserts and that is the divine origin of
the soul. Man becomes " a living soul " because of
the inbreathing of the Spirit of God. "Whatever
else may be shrouded in darkness this much is
clear.

Some bold thinkers go so far as to deny that
the soul ever had a beginning. They hold that
under one form or another it has existed from all
eternity, even as to all eternity it will exist, in-
carnated now under this guise, now under that,
but still continuing through all this succession of
changes one and the same soul. Others, believers
in the preexistence of the soul, are content with
less exorbitant claims. Instead of going back
into the eternities, they pause when they have
reached the beginnings of life upon this planet.
That was our true birthday they allege. In the
first soul all souls that ever have been or that
ever will be were involved, and from it they
have been, are being, and are to be evolved.

Directly counter to this view of the matter
runs the doctrine of creationism as it is called,
according to which souls are called into being by
the direct fiat of the Almighty, each century of

THE MYSTERY OF HEB ORIGIN. 17

human history counting as many distinct creative
acts of God as there have been souls born into
its life.

It is impossible even swiftly to summarize
the arguments that are urged by the maintain-
ers of these various theories or beliefs. Much
that is plausible may be said in behalf of any one
of them.

The doctrine of the soul's preexistence under-
lies, as we all know, some of the most ancient
and wide-spread of the religious systems of the
East. So profound a thinker and so devout a
Christian as William Wordsworth would appear
to have held it, at any rate for a season. One of
the very greatest of the Fathers of the Church
openly maintained and taught it. Certainly
there are features not a few in the dawning of a
child's intelligence to suggest that the soul is re-
calling and recovering rather than forming for
the first time its acquaintance with the world in
the midst of which it finds itself. We may not
be able to say as confidently as the poet to whom
I just now made reference has said it :

** The soul that riseth with us our life's star
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And Cometh from afar/'

but when we look into the eyes of a smiling
child who has not yet learned to talk and note
the friendly look of recognition, which seems to

18 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

say " My soul salutes thy soul, though I cannot
speak the thought that is in me ; '' we sometimes
feel disinclined flatly to deny, even though we
may not be quite ready confidently to assert the
belief that the soul brings with it into this world
a certain more or less ample equipment of ex-
perience gained elsewhere.

On the other hand, it cannot be pretended that
this notion of a preexistent life of the soul, finds
any support worth the calling such from the
sacred Scriptures. Our Lord Jesus Christ, whilst
asserting His own preexistence in the strongest
and clearest terms, nowhere so much as hints or
suggests that it was a preexistence shared with
us. "When they sought, as in the case of the man
born blind, they did seek to force him to commit
himself on the subject. He refused to gratify
their curiosity. Here was a man born blind.
Why was it ? Had he sinned in some previous
state of existence, and brought this calamity
upon himself by way of punishment ? Was he
working out a penalty incurred by wrongdoing
in some incarnation antedating the one in which
he then found himself? "Lord," they asked,
" Who did sin, this man or his parents that he
was born blind ? " Christ put them off with the
enigmatical reply, " Neither hath this man sinned
nor his parents; but that the works of God
should be made manifest in him."

Following this reticence of Christ with respect

THE MYSTERY OF HEB ORIGIN. 19

to the soul's origination and transmission, the
Church has steadfastly and scrupulously refrained
through all the Christian ages from laying down
the law upon the subject. By the Church, I
mean the Holy Church Universal, the Church
throughout the world.

Local Churches, provincial Churches may have
dogmatized upon the point, but never the whole
body of the faithful. There is nothing about it
in the great Creeds, which have come doAvn to us
from the primitive times and which we accept as
summing up the essentials of the doctrine of
Christ. God is there presented to us as "the
maker of heaven and earth and of all things
visible and invisible."

Among things invisible we must surely count
the soul, and, if we do so, we acknowledge God
as the Maker of the Soul. But by what method
He brings or has brought the soul into being we
are not told. To neither one of the two leading
philosophies of the subject (" Traducianism " and
" Creationism ") does the Church stand committed.
The record reads, in Scriptures which the Church
accepts, that " the Lord God formed man of the
dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life."

This assurance that there is in man, however
humble his beginnings may have been, and how-
ever seriously those beginnings may have been
blighted by his own transgressions, a certain

20 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

whiff, if no more, of the breath of the Eternal,
this assurance ought to be, for all purposes of
encouragement and stimulus, enough.

Traditional theology says that man fell and is
being gradually lifted up again. Natural science
declares that it can jB.nd no evidence of the fall-
ing but does find very much evidence of the lift-
ing process ; very well then there is one part of
the path where (pending the clearing up of the
rest of it) the two may walk together and be
agreed, let us be thankful that it is the more im-
portant part.

You may say to me, " But why call attention
to subjects which are confessedly shrouded in
darkness. With so many questions that are free
from all ambiguity and uncertainty awaiting treat-
ment, why approach so difficult and far-away
a theme as the mystery of the origin of the
Soul?"

"Well I have no excuse but this, and I confess
that it appears to me a valid one ; that it is good
for people, now and then, to enter into the
shadow of great mysteries and to be made re-
alize that, notwithstanding all our boast of elec-
tric lighting and X-rays, there are still some
things left in human life that are not so easily
seen through after all. The Temple of the Most
High God at Jerusalem was held not to have
been fully consecrated, until "the cloud filled
the house of the Lord." Then spake Solomon,

TEE MYSTERY OF HEB OMIGIK 21

"The Lord said that He would dwell in the
thick darkness."

Mystery has its uses and a religion from which
all sense of mystery has been banished is a poor
and thin affair. There is no need of our envying
the man whose delight in mountain scenery is
measured by the degree of his acquaintance with
the altitudes and the temperatures ; and to whose
mind the beating of the sea against the rocks
summons up only such reflections as the tables
of the nautical almanac suggest and warrant.
The true pupil and child of ]!^ature is he to whom,
most of all, Nature's mysteriousness appeals. It
is more of awe we need if we would deeply
learn.

I have occasion to come into this Church at
many hours of the day and often when the build-
ing is unoccupied, and I have become very fa-
miliar with its varying moods. I like it best
when there is least of glare and most of shadow,
least of that sort of light which makes all things
plain, and most of that sort which makes some
things dim and sombre. And so, perhaps, after
all it will have done us no harm this morning to
have pondered together the " mystery" of the ori-
gin of the soul.

11.

THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE.

IL

THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE.

The discipline or training of the soul is a mat-
ter which chiefly concerns Him to whom all souls
belong. I have promised to speak to you this
morning about the methods of the soul's disci-
pline. Let us not suffer ourselves for one mo-
ment to forget who it is that disciplines the soul,
for his are the methods we are to study. There
are methods which we follow in the endeavors
we make to discipline ourselves ; there are meth-
ods which others, our fellow men, follow in their
attempt to subject us to such discipline as in
their judgment, we require. Upon neither of
these is it my purpose to enlarge. What methods
does God adopt in his discipline of the soul?
That is the question in hand.

You and I are worth more to God than we are
to any one else. That follows from His having
thought us out and made us. ISTo interest sur-
passes an owner's interest. "When a soul is, as
we say, lost, pray who is the loser ? There can
be but one answer. The loser of a thing is in-
variably the one who owned and still owns the
thing lost. Loss does not work forfeiture. Who

26

26 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

was it that went after the one lost sheep ? Was
it not the sheep's owner ? "Who was it that swept
the house diligently until her lost piece of money
was recovered ? Was it not the woman to whom
the coin belonged ? Who was it that went out
to meet the lost son, when he was yet a great way
oflf ? Was it not the man who alone of all men
had the right to say of him, " This my son, was
dead and is alive again, was lost and is found " ?
Yes, the soul belongs to God, belongs to Him be-
cause He is the author and fashioner of the soul.
The methods of the soul's discipline, therefore,
are God's methods.

Let us ponder them. And first consider the
material with which God has to deal in disciplin-
ing the soul. The effects which an artificer
brings to pass can only be fairly judged when
we take into account the medium in which he
works, through which he endeavors to express
his thoughts. It would be unreasonable to com-
plain of a sculptor because of his failing to secure
by the blows of his chisel the same results which
a painter attains by the touch of his brush. The
one man, we say, does more justice to form, and
the other more justice to color. Perfection would
require that justice should be done both to form
and to color, but the conditions make this impos-
sible. In the very act of selecting his medium
the artist confesses his limitations. When God
determined that out of the dust of the ground

THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE, 27

He would make man, He predetermined that the
^man so to be made should be neither angel nor
archangel, seraph nor cherub, but just what dust
and breath of God commingled in due propor-
tions ought to produce, namely, man ; — and so it
was that man became a living soul, ready and
waiting to be disciplined or trained by the same
power that had called him into existence. Let
us be careful also what we understand by " dis-
cipline." Discipline may be taken in a larger or
in a narrower sense. Sometimes we speak of dis-
cipline as if it were one and the same thing with
punishment, and the adjectives which we asso-
ciate with discipline are apt to be such adjectives
as "stern," "severe," "rigid." But discipline,
rightly understood, has a much larger and more
generous definition than this. Discipline, in its
best and fullest sense, is teaching, education, train-
ing. Severity is only incidental to discipline ; it
is by no means of the essence of the thing. Eecall
that beautiful passage in the Apocryphal Book
of the Wisdom of Solomon, in which Wisdom
is personified. " She goeth about," says the au-
thor, " seeking such as are worthy of her, show-
eth herself favorably unto them in the ways, and
meeteth them in every thought. For the very
true beginning of her is the desire of discipline
and the care of discipline is love ; and love is the
keeping of her laws, and the giving heed unto
her laws is the assurance of incorruption, and in-

28 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

corruption maketh us near to God." Here " dis-
cipline " is evidently meant to be understood in
the sense of training, education, and that is the
sense in which we shall understand it to-day.
What are the methods which God uses in the
training or education of the soul ?

He has three books, I answer, on which He
depends in this anxious and delicate process;
they are his Picture-book, his Story-book and his
Dream-book. What we call Nature is God's Pic-
ture-book. By it He is enabled to reach man's
soul through the eye. There are a great many
conflicting notions abroad as to what constitutes
" natural religion " so-called. I submit that the
best account of natural religion is that which
makes it to mean such fractional portion of full
and complete religion as outward Nature, God's
picture-book as I have called it, suggests. The
picture-book unsupplemented by anything more
is, of course, sadly insuflSicient ; nay, worse than
that, grossly misleading ; nevertheless, in its place
and time, it has an inestimable value. Certain of
the primary religious convictions which make
man the worshipping, temple-building creature
he is, owe their awakening ; — I do not say their
existence, for they exist in persons born blind,
but owe their awakening to the ministry of Na-
ture. Think how constantly Nature is appealed
to in the Psalter as if it were a great treasure-
house of the raw material of religion. Wonder

THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE. 29

and admiration and awe lie at the very roots of
worship, and there can be no question that the
soul is schooled in these emotions by what the
eye beholds in its outlook upon God's universe.
In the little baby stretching out its tiny arms
toward some bright object near or far, star or
toy, we discern the rudiments of worship, the
soul reaching up and out toward the best it sees.
Gradually, to be sure, the soul learns the positive,
comparative and superlative degrees ; and man-
hood relegates to a very insignificant place in its
regard the thing which was childhood's best ;
but the principle is unchanged, since for the soul
to concentrate all her affections and desires in
reaching out after the best is worship, and the
whole aim of revelation is to effect a substitution
of the true image for the false, to transfer adora-
tion from the pictures in the picture-book to Him
who meant the picture-book simply to be one of
His instruments or media in the discipline of the
soul.

All along through the Old Testament we find
a sharp line of demarcation drawn between those
who idolize Nature and those who stoutly refuse
to do so, but nowhere is there any disposition to
treat Nature with contempt. Nature in the
Psalms is everywhere the minister of reverence
and holy fear, — " When I consider Thy heavens,
the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars
which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou

30 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL,

art mindful of him or the Son of Man that Thou
visitest him ? " — that is the tone of psalmist after
psalmist. There is, you notice, no disposition
whatsoever betrayed, to deify the powers of
Nature, as the heathen round about Israel were
continually doing, but there is manifested an in-
tense interest in Nature herself as a witness to
the greatness and the majesty of Nature's Lord.

Or take such a Psalm as the one hundred and
fourth, with its panoramic view of Nature as a
whole, — what a marvelous composition it is, and
how completely theistic from first to last ! It
begins by picturing God as clothed with " majesty
and honor " and then goes on to describe in detail
what we may call the embroidery of this royal
robe. Figure follows figure in swift succession.
We are shown cloud-chariots swept along on the
winds of the wind, we see the ocean with its in-
numerable tenantry, w^e see the springs of water
trickling down the mountain sides, the wild
beasts prowling about, and the fowls of the air
flying to and from their nests ; — but everywhere,
whatever may be going on, we are reminded that
God is there, the animating power back of the
whole scene ; The cedars of Libanus are " trees
of the Lord," the lions roaring after their prey
" do seek their meat from God."

" O Lord," exclaims this greatest of the ancient
naturalists ; awe-struck by what he sees, " O Lord,
how manifold are thy works, in wisdom hast

THE METHODS OF HEB DISCIPLINE. 31

Thou made them all, the Earth is full of thy
riches."

But the appeal to the Picture-book of Nature
is not confined to the Old Testament. God's dis-
ciplinary employment of the things of the outer
world in his training of the soul is as manifest in
the Gospels as in the Psalms even though in the
later scriptures it takes on a different form.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is continually referring us
to Nature for illustrations of the spiritual truth
He is endeavoring to enforce. Would He con-
vince us that the life is more than meat ? it is
" Consider the ravens." Would He convince us
that the body is more than raiment, it is " Con-
sider the lilies." The tree sprung from the mus-
tard-seed with its branches full of birds, the field
of wheat and tares, the vine trellissed about the
window of the upper-room, — these are all of
them familiar instances of Christ's appeal to
Nature, as a fellow witness with himself to the
great truths which it behooves the soul of man
to know. We make a grave mistake when we
let any alarmist cry frighten us away from the
proper and legitimate helps which Nature has it
in her power to give us in our search for God. If
we start out resolved to look no further than
Nature in that search, we shall indeed come to
grief, and very serious grief ; but if we turn to
Nature only for such ministry as she has been
empowered to render, knowing all the while that

32 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

it is a ministry partial and imperfect, we shall
get nothing but good from her discipline. If she
teach us nothing else than to love beauty and to
reverence the principle of law she will have laid
us under no slender obligation, for the love of
beauty is the key to worship, and reverence for
the principle of law is the stepping-stone to
righteousness and true holiness. So much for
the Picture-book, "What now of the Story-book ?

By the Story-book I mean the record and
chronicle of what has happened on the surface of
this earth of ours since life, and more especially
human life began to run its course here. Of by
far the greater number of the events that have
happened the memory has perished utterly ; but
the tradition of some of them survives. These
surviving memories taken together constitute
what we know as history, the history of the
past ; and one of God's methods of disciplining
the soul is the bringing to bear on her life these
powers of the past, these still active energies of
what a poet has called " buried time."

Consider attentively, for a moment, your own
life, recall your soul's experience thus far, and
judge for yourself as to the extent to which what
has been told you about the past has influenced
and moulded you. Think of the tremendous
power that usage and habit and custom have ex-
ercised over you. The whole configuration of
life, as you view it to-day, is utterly different from

THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE, 33

what it would have been had no standards of con-
duct, no precedents, no examples existed to guide
you to right choices.

But the moment you begin taking account of
such things as usage and habit and custom and
example and precedent, that moment you touch
history. Save for the record, the chronicle, the
tradition, these inheritances of a vanished past
never would have come down to you ; you would
have had to start fresh and unequipped, slowly
and painfully discovering for yourself a few, (for
it could have been only a few) of the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge which the existence
of history in the world has made available
for you at once. We have seen how keenly the
Psalmist appreciated the value of what we agreed
to call the picture-book, let us now see what a
very high estimate he set upon the story-book.

Take, for instance, that long psalm Attendite
papule^ appointed in the Prayer Book Psalter
for the fifteenth evening of the month, — What
is the engrossing subject of its many verses ? It
is wholly and only Jehovah's goodness to his peo-
ple through all the long reaches of the past. " I
propose," the psalmist declares, " to report such
things as the fathers have told. They ought not
be hidden from the children of the generations
to come." He accounts it, he says, his plain duty
to show the honor of the Lord " his mighty and
wonderful works that He has done." Accord-

34 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

ingly, starting from Jacob, he proceeds to narrate
in a most vi^id and exhilarating fashion, the great
things that were done for the Hebrew people
during their passage from the land of bondage to
the land of promise. He reminds them of the
marvellous things God did for their fathers in the
land of Egypt ; in the field of Zoan ; He divided
the sea, He led them with a light of fire. He
clave the hard rocks and gave them drink thereof,
He commanded the clouds above, He opened the
doors of heaven, He rained down manna upon
them for to eat; and gave them food from
heaven ; — and so he goes on until the story cul-
minates in the choice of David and the building
of the temple.

What a splendid incentive to patriotism in such
a psalm as that ? How the hearts of the listen-
ing young people of that day must have throbbed
and leaped within them as they hung upon the
lips of the minstrel singing the story of that
marvellous rescue and still more marvellous pil-
grimage. He sang as he did, he told them, in
order that their posterity might know these
things, and the children which were yet unborn,
to the intent that when they came up they might
show their children the same ; that they might
put their trust in God and not forget the works
of God, but keep His commandments.

That was what history meant to the Israelites.
It was not merely a memory, it was a stimulating

TEE METHODS OF HEB DISCIPLINE. 35

memory. It was not a mere dry record of facts,
it was an inspiration and a song. Because God
had done great things for their fathers they be-
lieved that He could and would do great things
for them. ISTay, they went further and held that
God was actually bound by the most sacred of
all ties, the obligation of a solemn promise, to
stand by them. Their appeal was virtually that
which we perpetuate in the Litany. " O God,
we have heard with our ears and our fathers have
declared unto us, the noble works that Thou didst
in their days and in the old time before them " ;
a reminder upon which follows, as logically as a
conclusion from a premise, the urgent petitionary
cry, — " O Lord, arise, help us and deliver us, for
thine honor." He can scarcely be an honorable
God, so the implication runs, if He disowns or
shuts his eyes upon so memorable a past.

If the history of God's dealings with a single
race could exercise over that race such controll-
ing sway, it would seem as if we Christians ought
to be able to draw from our further reaching
past, stimulus and instruction more abundant
still. Their story-book, fascinating as it was,
could not compare with ours. They could look
back through the generations to no greater de-
liverer than Moses ; we look back to the incar-
nate Son of God, and in the act of looking back
to Him we look across all the momentous results
that have followed upon His coming. The chap-

36 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

ters of their book dealt mostly with wars and
migrations and captivities, ours include such
mystic events as a Nativity and a Baptism, a
Temptation in a "Wilderness and a Transfigura-
tion on a Mount, an Agony in a Garden and a
Passion on a Cross, a precious Death and Burial,
a mighty Eesurrection and a glorious Ascension,
— these and all that has followed upon these.
Surely we must fain acknowledge that history
has its place among the methods of the soul's
discipline.

I spoke of a third book as being instrumental
in God's hands to this same end, — his Dream
Book. Over and above the pictures of ISTature
and the lessons of History, we are bound to take
account of that gift of inner and spiritual vision
known as prophecy. The picture-book, Nature,
is the book of the present, it lies open all the
time before our eyes ; the story-book, History, is
the book of the past, its records cover the gener-
ations that have gone ; the dream-book. Prophecy,
is the book of the future. From time to time
God has sent into the world the messengers whom
we know as seers. To them it has been given to
see further into things than for the rest of us is
possible ; not only so but there has been granted
also a prevision of the future. They have dreamed
dreams and seen visions and because of their
visions and their dreams their brother men have
been kept from losing heart, have plucked up

THE METHODS OF HEB DISCIPLINE. 37

courage and been brave to live. Man must have
hope if he is to keep on struggling. And these
prophets have been the ministers of hope.

The prophet is like the man who paces to and
fro on the forward deck of a ship keeping a sharp
lookout. On his ability and his fidelity the
safety of the whole ship's company depends.
He must have an eye keen to pierce the mist, an
ear quick to catch the sound of breakers. Yes,
we need the prophet and because we need him
God sends him.

There have been many, many prophets since
the world began. The names of some of them
have been preserved to us but the names of the
most of them are forgotten. Of the prophets
referred to in Holy Scriptures, both Hebrew and
Christian, only a few are, as we say, personally
known to us ; as to the rest all we know is that
they lived and prophesied. Nor are we to sup-
pose that the ministry of prophecy has been con-
fined to the Hebrew race, though it has been so
much more profusely lavished on that race than
on any other. Enoch, seventh from Adam,
prophesied, we are told, and that was long be-
fore there was any Hebrew race in existence.
Moreover, if we are to accept the sign of the
prophet Jonah we may well believe that other
heathen peoples, besides the Mnevites, received
from Him who inspires prophecy intimations of
judgment to come. Balaam, great prophet that

38 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

we have to acknowledge Mm, was no Hebrew,
yet he foresaw Christ and His Kingdom.

Yes, even though we must needs acknowledge
that the lessons of Nature and the lessons of
history have been made more widely and more
generally useful in the education of man than
the lessons of prophecy, we must still admit that
prophecy holds a most important place, and that
no full account can be given of the methods God
uses in his discipline of the soul if prophecy is
overlooked.

The God we Christians worship is the God
" which was, which is, and which is to come," and
what else should we expect of Him in his train-
ing of us than that He should make past, present
and future all three of them tributary to his
purpose of perfecting the soul.

Doubtless you will have noticed that through-
out what I have been saying no attention what-
ever has been given to disturbing and conflicting
forces in this matter of God's discipline of man.
The assumption has been all along that the
School was a J^ormal School in which all things
were rightly ordered and the whole plan duly
carried out. This has not been because of any
forgetfulness of the part that temptations and
sin play in the earthly experience of the soul, but
simply with a view to that gain in clearness
which comes of dealing with one subject at a
time. How evil and sorrow cut across the path

THE METHODS OF HER DISCIPLINE. 39

of smooth advance, how they break in upon the
divine plan and mar its symmetry we shall dis-
cover in due time. Meanwhile remember these
three classics of the soul, the Picture-book, the
Story-book, and the Dream-book. Well and thor-
oughly to have learned the lessons they can
teach, will win enrollment for you, in that
fourth and greatest book of all God's Book of
Eemembrance.

III.

THE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE.

III.

THE EISTEMIES OF HER PEACE.

The enemies of the soul's peace are three, —
pride, anger and desire. One of these hostile
forces delivers a front attack, the other two are
continually plotting stealthy approaches on either
flank. If we would thoroughly understand the
strategic situation, and carry on our part of the
fight intelligently we must keep these cardinal
points from which danger threatens continually
in sight. Chance may seem to be the arbiter of
victory, but it is not really so. In the long run
it is vigilance that conquers. Let us then make
a study of our allied adversaries, pride, anger
and desire, considering how and why it is that
they should so menace our peace.

You say that what surprises you about this
reconnoissance of the enemy's position is not that
it discloses three points of attack, but rather that
it should disclose so few as three.

You have been accustomed to think of the
enemies of the soul's peace as far more numerous
than that. "My name," said the quick-witted
Spirit who ventured to adjure Jesus not to tor-
ment him, "My name is Legion; for we are

43

44 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

many," and even so you have been accustomed
to think of the soul's enemies as being many
rather than few. Doubtless such is the fact, but
when we have multitudes to deal with there is a
certain advantage in classifying the material
which goes to make them up, ranking and grad-
ing their contents for convenience in reckoning,
and I am convinced that before we shall have
done, this morning, with pride, anger and desire,
it will have become clear to us that this analysis
of the forces hostile to our peace is a sufficiently
searching one. An army, we must remember,
may be made up of many divisions, may have its
regiments and battalions and companies, and yet
be all the while one army. And so with these
attacking forces that war against the soul, our
counting them only three in no way diminishes
the multifariousness of the evil for which they
stand, the sin they represent.

Take pride as our first instance. Pride is no
sooner mentioned in the Litany, you remember,
than two affiliated sins follow close upon its
heels, — vainglory and hypocrisy. These are the
congeners and blood-relatives of pride, and there
is no reason in the world why we should set them
off by themselves as separate and independent
entities.

Pride is a disturber of the soul's peace because
it introduces into our inner life an element of
falsehood; and peace and falsehood are two

THE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE. 45

things that cannot live together. " Peace through
the truth " is a wise maxim, no other kind of
peace has promise of permanence.

The falsehood in pride lies just here. We
form an estimate of ourselves and our intrinsic
worth, our own positive merit and deserving,
our own talent or ability, which estimate, when
tested impartially by a competent judge, is seen
to be a wholly erroneous one, erroneous because
exaggerated ; and yet so self -deceived are we
that this imagined measure of ourselves and of
the credit due us, is accepted in the court-room of
our own consciousness, and, what is worse, acted
upon in the open spaces of our outer life as if it
were absolutely correct. Occasionally, more
often in some lives than in others, circumstances
force upon a man a momentary insight into
things as they really are ; he sees by flash-light
the true interior situation, and then, as we say,
his pride is " wounded." A blessed sort of injury
that. How grateful we ought to be for such dis-
closures. " Faithful are the wounds of a friend."
What we call vanity is simply pride busying it-
self with little things ;— clothes, bric-a-brac, up-
holstery, good looks, accomplishments. Vain
people are sometimes lovable in spite of their
vanity, for the simple reason that having allowed
their pride to spend itself upon trifles, they still
retain back of their vanity a certain reserve fund
of unselfishness which makes them still worth

46 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

loving, whereas, one who is all pride away back
to the very centre of his being, has squeezed out
of his nature whatever there was there that de-
served to be loved. And when you get back to
where the heart should be there is none.

But what, under this showing, becomes, you
ask me, of that well-known virtue "proper
pride," and what becomes of that admirable
quality a " just pride " ? These, I answer, are
careless expressions, pardonable enough when
used colloquially, but incapable of standing the
fire of criticism for a moment. If pride be what
we have agreed to consider it an exaggerated
conceit of one's own value or importance, how
can it ever be " proper," or how can it possibly
be " just ? " For " proper pride " read self-respect,
which is a very different matter, and for "just
pride " read a fair, well-warranted satisfaction,
and we shall be nearer the mark. The very fact
that people when they are justifying pride, or
trying to justify it, speak of a "pardonable
pride " betrays a lurking misgiving that pride is
something which under any and all circumstances
calls for forgiveness. Yes, pride is a sin, and
the prolific parent of sins, and if we would find
peace at the last we may as well begin by down-
ing pride at the first.

But how shall we go to work to down pride ?
It is easy enough to say that the remedy for
pride lies in the practice of humility — but that

THE ENEMIES OF EEB PEACE. 47

does not help us very much. We cannot take
virtue by doses. The physician of the soul
who can think of nothing better than to pre-
scribe as a cure for a particular vice a pill or
potion of the contrary virtue is unworthy of
his calling. The merest apprentice in spiritual
therapeutics ought to know better than that.
Pride is one of those painless ailments which
are all the more dangerous because unrecog-
nized and unacknowledged by the patient. The
great point, in such instances, is to get the
man's eyes open to the fact that he needs treat-
ment, for unless he can be persuaded actively to
cooperate in his own case, things are all up with
him. The only instrumentality that can bring
about in man or woman the final excision of
pride, is the presentation in some unmistakable
way of a personality which by force of contrast
shames self into a sense of its own utter worth-
lessness and insignificance. Paul told his Corin-
thians a home truth, which must have done them
a world of good, when he said of some of them
who had been particularly vainglorious that
" they measuring themselves by themselves and
comparing themselves among themselves" had
been the opposite of wise. But if it be provincial
for people to confine themselves to a small circle
of comparison, as these people had been doing at
Corinth, how much worse than provincial must
it be still further to narrow down the circle until

48 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

it holds only one's self and that other self who
always sits confronting one's first self in the
mystic mirror of the consciousness. That whole-
some shaming process which I have spoken of as
the only cure for pride takes its most effective
beginning when the soul can be persuaded to
open her eyes upon the Lamb of God, the alone
sinless Christ.

Nowhere in the Gospels does Simon Peter ap-
pear to so great advantage as when, falling down
at Jesus' knees, there on the sand-beach of the
lake, he cries out in startled contrition " Depart
from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord." There
had suddenly swum into the field of that dis-
ciple's vision the image of what spiritual perfec-
tion really meant. He seemed to see the abso-
lute goodness incarnated there before his eyes,
and, for the moment, the whole fabric of his
pride shrivelled and vanished like dry leaves in
the flame. Between that faultless One and him-
self he could discern nothing in common, and
though the thought of separation pierced him
with anguish, separation, he said to himself, it
must be.

The self-centred man is in the same false posi-
tion with the self-centred earth of the old as-
tronomy. "It is obvious," they used to say,
" that the sun goes around the earth, for we see
it set in the West and rise the next morning in
the East." This seemed conclusive and it was

THE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE. 49

not an easy thing to shake mankind out of so
plausible a belief. But Christ accomplishes a
greater marvel still when He persuades a soul
that itself is not the centre it has fondly supposed
itself to be, and that humble dependence not
proud independence is the law for man.

Another enemy of the soul's peace is anger,
which like pride counts in its retinue many at-
tendant sins. There is to be sure one form of
anger that is blameless. The anger aroused at
the sight of cruelty or injustice or any unlawful
use of power, especially if we are sure that no
element of self-interest enters into the case, such
anger is not only not a blameworthy, it is a posi-
tively praiseworthy state of feeling. To be too
cowardly or too lethargic to be able to feel right-
eous indignation is no credit to man or woman.
"Be ye angry," is an apostolic commandment,
which, the proviso, " and sin not," by no means, re-
peals. Anger in this sense is what an old English
theologian calls it, " one of the sinews of the soul."

But anger as commonly understood, commonly
felt and commonly exhibited is quite another af-
fair. Anger is the feeling which takes possession
of us Avhen things do not go as we wish them to
go, when we are thwarted and opposed, when we
are ridiculed or belittled, when we are cheated of
credit which we think belongs to us, or charged
with motives which we are conscious of never
having entertained, then it is that anger, for the

50 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

moment, fevers the reason and by fevering the
reason imperils the steadiness of the will. Hu-
man nature is, perhaps, best represented under
the similitude of a realm or kingdom, at the
heart and centre of which, stands a throne. The
monarch, the occupant of this throne is the will.
So long as the will holds its proper sovereignty
and governs prudently with all its power the
whole realm is in peace. But once dethrone the
will and anarchy is upon you in the twinkling of
an eye. Eeason is the prime-minister who helps
the king to rule as he ought. " By me," says the
Wisdom of the Proverbs (which is but a synonym
for the reason) by me kings rule and princes de.
cree justice. By me princes rule and nobles,
even all the judges of the earth." Whatever,
therefore, perverts reason, even for ever so brief
a time, imperils the throne and threatens an-
archy. Now, this is precisely what anger does.
For the moment, it perverts reason. The old
moralists used to call anger a short madness.
That is a strong way of stating it, but it is
scarcely too strong. Shakespeare likens it to in-
toxication. The two definitions agree in locating
the mischief which anger does. They both of
them charge anger with impairing the integrity
of the reason. The angry man is notoriously
the unreasonable man, that is the very thing we
say of him, " he will not listen to reason."

What now shall we say as to the antidote?

THE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE, 51

We discovered a cure for pride. Is there a cure
for anger? Yes, and it is to be found in the
very same way in which we found the other
remedy, that is to say, by looking Christward.
Simon Peter, the impetuous, was our teacher in
the former instance, let us turn to him again, let
him teach us now ; for there can be no higher
authority on hasty temper than he. This is what
he says, " Christ also suffered for us," leaving us
an example that ye should follow his steps : " who
did no sin neither was pride found in his mouth ;
who, when He was reviled reviled not again,
when He suffered He threatened not, but commit-
ted Himself to Him that judgeth righteously."
Committed Himself to Him that judgeth right-
eously,— yes, that is it ; that is the key to the
conquest of anger. St. Paul has the same
thought though he words it differently. "He
that judgeth me is the Lord." What we want to
do in the struggle with anger is to gain time, for
if we can only gain time the day is saved. This
device of appealing the case instantly to a higher
tribunal covers the ground completely. Of
course the resort is one that is only open to
Christians, for it is only they who believe in the
reality of a heavenly tribunal and the certainty
of a judgment to come. But I am speaking to
Christian believers. It is scarcely to be expected
that any others will stray into a church of a
week day in Lent, — I am speaking to Christian

52 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

believers, and I have a right to expect that the
appeal to Christ's example and to his apostles'
teaching will weigh with them. That example
was gentleness. That precept is forbearance.
In many cases in which we permit ourselves to
get angry we are in the wrong, and instead of
being under an obligation to forgive are really in
sore need of being forgiven. And even in those
cases where we are technically in the right of the
quarrel, or the misunderstanding, our answer to
God's question " Dost thou well to be angry ? "
is a very lame one.

Except in the character of disinterested specta-
tors we never do well to be angry. " No man,"
says the legal maxim, " can be a judge in his own
cause." In every controversy, therefore, where
our own selfhood comes in to mix the issue, the
only safety is to stand by Paul's ground that
vengeance belongeth unto God, and that for the
Christian the law of retaliation has been left far
behind. Let the brute keep up the eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth morality. The children
of God have been called up on to higher ground ;
they have caught their Master's word " forgive " ;
"if their enemy hungers they feed him," if he
thirsts they '^give him drink." I do not allege
that this is the Christian practice, for to say so
would be an emptj^ boast. I do say that it is
the Christian doctrine and the only Christian
doctrine. Diversities of interpretation there are

THE ENEMIES OF EEB PEACE. 53

in the Church many and grave, but upon this
point there is unanimity perfect and entire.

There is one other enemy of the soul's peace ;
namely, desire. This is by far the most loud-
mouthed of the three attacking armies, for de-
sire is nothing if not clamorous. We cannot re-
pudiate desire and turn our backs on it alto-
gether, condemning it out and out, for desire is
human. ISTothing that forms part of the original
equipment of human nature, the starting capital
of man can be in itself bad, and so far as we can
see, utterly to kill desire would mean the perma-
nent maiming and mutilation of the soul. It is
unfallen, not fallen man, who is represented in
the primitive paradise as discerning in the fruit
of the tree of knowledge something to be " de-
sired." Desire, therefore, cannot, according to
the Biblical theology, be pronounced intrinsically
and necessarily evil. To quit our military figure
and to go back to our parable of the realm, the
kingdom, the throne room, what we have really
to be anxious about is the relation of desire to the
regal power in us, the will. Desire is, from its
very nature, so persistent, so persuasive, so im-
portunate, that it is continually tending to ac-
quire, not merely influence with the will, which
would be all right enough, not merely legitimate
influence, but that leading and prevalent influence
which belongs to reason and to reason only.

We have seen that pride deceives the will, and

64 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL.

that anger fevers the will, let us be frank and con-
fess that desire too often cajoles and over-persuades
the will, in the face of better advice from the will's
true counsellor the conscience, for conscience is
but another name for reason acting in the moral
and spiritual field.

But again, you ask me what of the remedy ?
How are we to curb desire ? How are we to get
the upper hand of " these rebellious wishes " ?

There would seem to be only one way, and that
is to cultivate such profound reverence for the will
of God as such, that the simple knowledge that
any desire of the heart is tempting and alluring
us to overpass the boundary of what is righteous,
the limit of what is holy, suffices to give us pause.
St. Paul in what he says to the Ephesians, classi-
fies desire under two heads, " the desires of the
flesh and of the mind" is his phrase. The
Church, in her baptismal ofiice, summarizes the
matter a little differently ; she speaks of covetous
desires after the vain pomp and glory of the
world, and of the sinful desires of the flesh. It
does not so very much matter how we analyze
and classify, upon the main point we are all
agreed. We all know that desire is a tremen-
dously potent influence in the daily life of the soul,
and that there can be no such thing as " peace
within " until we learn the secret of saying to
those proud waves, "Be still." The ascetic theo-
logians have their theory of the matter. Writers

TBE ENEMIES OF HER PEACE. 55

like Thomas a Kempis seem to think that it is
both possible and praiseworthy actually to kill
out, to excise, to annihilate the heart's desires.
I cannot believe that it is God's wish that we
should so deal with the heart which He has
planted in us. I do not find in the l^ew Testa-
ment any teaching which indicates that desire is to
be conquered to the point of extermination. I do
find much which tells me that an overmastering
desire for things which it has not pleased God to
give us, whether in the line of enjoyment, or in-
fluence, or possession, is utterly and hopelessly at
variance with the soul's peace.

Let us try to look at our lives soberly and
seriously from God's point of view, try to dis-
cern, as accurately as may be, the law of propor-
tion which applies to them, try to discover just
what it is that He is expecting of us in the way
of activity and just what it is that He is expect-
ing of us in the way of repression and self-efface-
ment. The lines of configuration are not the
same for all lives, they run as variously as the
lines in one's hand and the palmistry by which
we determine their signification is prayer. Ask
God to show you personally, individually, what
his plan for you is like, and then out of an honest
heart you can breathe the further supplication
that He will enable you not only to desire that
which He doth promise but also to love that
which He doth command.

TV.

THE SOKEOWS OF HER PILGEIMAGE.

IV.

THE SOEEOWS OF HEE PILGEIMAGE.

Theee are three standard and classical figures
of speech under which, in all generations, men
have been accustomed to depict life, — the school,
the battle and the journey.

The soul, that is to say, may be imagined as
pupil, as combatant or as traveller. Under two
of these heads, the disciplinary and the militant,
we have already studied the soul. There remains
the third, and I have promised that to-day in our
dealings with the soul we should consider the
sorrows of her pilgrimage. The subject, so
worded, has, it must be confessed, a sentimental
sound, but we will try to steer clear of sentimen-
talism.

Nothing is more matter-of-fact than sorrow,
when it is the real thing. With mimic and im-
agined sorrows we have no special call to deal.
It is they that make the sentimentalist's stock in
trade. The people who easily shed tears over
the heroes and heroines of written or acted trag-
edy, while remaining utterly unmoved by the
troubles and trials of the flesh and blood suf-
ferers who have a direct claim upon their sym-

59

60 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TBE SOUL.

pathies, have always been and will always be fair
game for the satirist. Their tears are about as
genuine, mean about as much, as the spangled
waterfall, at the back of the stage, down which
the hero has cast himself. This is a trumped-up
and second-hand sorrowfulness which does not
count.

To-day we are to consider only such sorrows
as are real, and even these we must take care to
approach in a sane and healthy temper. No pos-
sible good could come of our merely gloating
over them as morbid phenomena of human life.
Why probe wounds if one has no intention of
pouring in the wine and oil of comfort ? Why
fret and worry the pilgrims with endless talk
about the dust and heat, if you have no good
tidings of the twelve palm trees by the well or
of the great rock shadowing a weary land ? For
bad Samaritans and blind guides there is no de-
mand.

There is one sort of sorrow which all religious
minds must acknowledge to be wholesome, St.
Paul calls it " godly," the sorrow for sin. Some
think that this is the only kind of sorrow in-
tended in the beatitude " Blessed are they that
mourn," but this is an extreme opinion. If it
were true, as some maintain, that any feeling of
sorrow other than such sorrow as is caused by
the thought of our own misdoings ought to be ac-
counted unworthy of a Christian, how could we

THE SORROWS OF HER PILGRIMAGE. 61

possibly explain that anguished cry of the sinless
One, '' O, my Father, let this cup pass from Me " ?
And yet I think we may very properly acknowl-
edge that no sort of sorrow so well befits the
hmnan soul as does the sorrow for sin. Never is
man in wiser or in better mood than when he
finds himself ready and eager to say from his
heart, "I will confess my wickedness and be
sorry for my sin." It matters not that this sort
of sorrow is out of fashion. A great many good
things are always out of fashion for the time
being. We observe, however, that they have a
way of coming back into fashion after a while.
The very people who discarded them gradually
come to see that they had a certain value pecul-
iar to themselves and they are brought back.
Many influences are at work just now that have
it for their effect to minimize the sinfulness of
sin. Our enlarged acquaintance with the uni-
verse and its innumerable worlds by quickening
our sense of the insignificance of man makes it
more easy for us to belittle the moral value of
whatever so slight and inconsiderable a creature
may do or leave undone. The machinery of Na-
ture also inclines to fatalism minds that can see
no further than the wheel- work. " We are but
tiny portions of the huge frame," they say to
themselves. " We are the merest victims of cause
and effect ; the bondmen and bondwomen of a
despotic force hidden out of our sight, somewhere

62 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL.

back of our lives. "Who has any right to blame
us for doing what clearly, our natures being such
as they are, we cannot help doing ? " And so it
has come about that there seems to be much less
of that sort of sorrow prevalent which people
used to call sorrow for sin. It is thought of,
when thought of at all, as people think of those
infantile diseases, all liability to which mature
men and women have outgrown.

And yet there are found here and there, still
surviving, and by no means the least attractive
of their kind, souls with whom sorrow for sin
seems to be a very real thing. They aflBrm,
when in a confiding mood, that a certain vision
of spiritual perfectness, an ideal of what the soul
ought to be and might be, haunts all their waking
hours, and they declare that their failure to reach
this lofty standard, strive as they may, is to them
a source of continual sorrow.

They do not deny that the argument of the
fatalist has an exceedingly plausible look, they
do not profess to be able to dispose satisfactorily
of all the difiiculties that it raises. They only
know that, in spite of everything, the voice of
conscience succeeds in making itself heard, and
that, do what they will, the sense of ill-desert,
the conviction of sin, the longing for peace with
God, the desire for an effective word of absolu-
tion abide.

But this is only one of what the psalmist elo-

TEE SORROWS OF HER PILGRIMAGE. 63

quently calls the multitude of sorrows. Pain
and sickness bring sorrow. A pathetic attempt
is on foot to explain these things away by attrib-
uting them to the imagination, but with the
vast majority of sufferers such fine-spun reason-
ing avails nothing, they insist on continuing to
believe as the bulk of men have ever believed
from the beginning that pain and sickness are
very real things indeed, actual burdens grievous
to be borne ; an evil that calls loudly for redress.

The great typical and exemplary sufferers of
Holy Scripture, Job, Jeremiah, St. Paul, never
try to comfort themselves with the thought that
the blows and bruises under which they stagger
are imagined. " I will speak in the anguish of
my spirit," cries one of these men, " I will com-
plain in the bitterness of my soul."

" My strength and my hope," exclaims another
of them, " is perished from the Lord : remember-
ing my affliction and my misery, the wormwood
and the gall." "In afflictions, in necessities, in
distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults,
in labors, in watchings," — such is the language
of a third.

Men who talk in this way are not seeking to
persuade us that pain is a figment of the imagi-
nation ; on the contrary, they are all full of the
thought that the experience through which they
have had to pass has been a fearful, a terrible, a
heart-rending thing. Whether God's hand has

64 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

been behind it or the adversary's malice they
may not be able to determine ; the one thing they
feel perfectly sure of is that they have suffered.

There are other sorrows besides those caused
by bodily pain and anguish. Reverses of fortune
bring sorrow. A man just past middle life sees
the results of the patient labor of all his best
years swept away as by a flood ; a woman learns,
of a sudden, that through some bad investment
or some flagrant breach of trust the modest com-
petency upon which she has been relying for the
support of her old age has been swallowed up as
in a quick-sand. These things break the courage
of the bravest. It is such sights that sadden the
heart of Ecclesiastes, and make him the cynic
that he is, chanting his bitter refrain of the " evil
done under the sun."

Again, thwarted ambitions bring sorrow.
Men are carried along by the mysterious sorcery
of illusion, fancying for a good half of the pil-
grimage, that some wonderfully fortunate thing
is in store for them just around the next corner,
when all of a sudden they wake to the fact that
their hope is a blighted hope. It is the other
man who has secured the coveted office, the other
man who has achieved the reputation. "The
many fail, the one succeeds," — a mournful maxim,
a statement which we should be glad to reverse
if we might, but unhappily the truth, the hard,
disagreeable, repellant, inevitable fact.

THE SORROWS OF HER PILGRIMAGE, 65

Again, there are inherited memories that are
full of sorrow, transmitted burdens of the past,
which some have to accept as their companions
from the beginning of the pilgrimage to the end
of it. "Many an inherited sorrow," says a great
prose writer of our day. " Many an inherited
sorrow that has maimed a life has been breathed
into no human ear." Yes, — how true that is.
We see the maimed life; we note the halting
achievement; and we wonder why so much
talent, nay, so much genius, perhaps, should have
so slight a yield to show, when all the while the
real secret of our disappointment at our friend's
poor showing ought really to be looked for in a pre-
vious generation. The man started with a burden
from which he has never been able to shake him-
self free. The soul, it may be, was a brave
enough soul, as souls go, but the handicap of de-
pressing, disheartening memories was too heavy,
and so what ought to have been best lapsed into
second-best. We are disappointed, — but what is
our disappointment compared with his ?

Again, there is the sorrow of personal bereave-
ment and domestic loss. So engrossing and ex-
acting is this form of sorrow that we almost feel
as if the very word sorrow had been misapplied
when we hear it used to signify any other form
of distress. When it is said of any one, without
further explanation that he or she is " in sorrow,"
we invariably draw the inference that the sorrow

66 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

has been occasioned by death. And yet of the
" five sorrowful mysteries " which the devotional
writers reckon up, death counts as only one.
There is a worse grief than that of watching the
departure out of this life of those we love, and
that is their departure out of the way of truth,
the way of righteousness, the way of peace. Less
hard for Jesus was the sight of Lazarus dead
than the sight of Judas coming to greet Him with
a kiss, or the sight of Peter protesting in the
servant's hall " I do not know the man."

It is time that we turn to consider the remedy
for sorrow. There are some who maintain that
any such enquiry is superfluous. Sorrow, they
insist, ought not to be temporized with, for a
moment, but simply and stoutly prohibited. Why
should Christians sorrow ? Sin, the only thing that
properly calls for sorrow, they have cast behind
them, and to sorrow for anything else is rank
treason against Christ our King, who said to his
disciples "Rejoice and be exceeding glad;" as
well as contemptuous towards the Apostle who
exhorts " In everything give thanks." Undoubt-
edly there is a certain amount of truth in this
extreme position. For the soul to allow herself
to be overmastered by sorrow and permanently
possessed of it, is assuredly unchristian. And
yet we cannot forget that the same voice which
said " Rejoice and be exceeding glad," said also
"My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto

THE SORROWS OF HER PILGRIMAGE. 67

death," and that the same apostle who was so
eager that the true believers should in every-
thing give thanks, confessed to having felt deeply
cast down when " left at Athens alone."

The simple fact is that it is unnatural to
smother sorrow on the instant it is born, and it
is unchristian so to nurse and tend it that it be-
comes the lifelong companion of our pilgrimage.
A crowned sorrow and a petted sorrow are two
very different things. The first duty of sorrow
is to find its way to some mount of transfigura-
tion that it may be ennobled there. Sorrow's
next duty is to come back again to the plain
where the halt and the maimed, the sick, the deaf,
the blind and the devil-possessed are living, to
see what can be done by sympathy and by ef-
fort to lessen the world's great aggregate of woe.

The only sure and permanent remedy for sor-
row, whether in its acute or its chronic form,
whether manifested as sudden and sharp anguish
or as rooted melancholy, the only remedy for
sorrow is to become firmly persuaded of the love
of God. All other alleged specifics for the cure
of this malady of the soul are mere nostrums.
With superficial natures they may work what
look like miraculous results. But of wounds that
have no scars it is tolerably safe to conclude that
they were not very deep to start with.

Once persuaded of the love of God, and so
firmly persuaded that nothing can shake our

68 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

faith, sorrow and suffering are accepted — not in-
deed without much wonder and amazement on
our part that such things should be, but with that
sort of acquiescence and patient tolerance which
we exercise toward any puzzle or enigma which
we know is to be, in due time, explained. Na-
ture abounds in phenomena that give the student
of her mysteries pause. In many points it is evi-
dent that God has been educating man by a proc-
ess of illusion, and that, the amiable poet to the
contrary notwithstanding, " things are not what
they seem." There is very much in the scheme
of Nature, as at present understood, which looks
to be self -contradictory. It is a mistake to sup-
pose that to the eye of the scientific observer all
things in the heavens above and in the earth be-
neath are perfectly harmonized and balanced.
There are some puzzles left even for the astrono-
mer and the chemist ; conceptions quite as irrec-
oncilable by mortal wit as the goodness of God
and the sorrows of men. But the man of science
does not despair of finally discovering the real
harmony which, as he is convinced, lies back of
the apparent discords which thus far he has been
enabled to compose. Neither, then, ought the
soul to despair of finding that reconcilement be-
tween the love of God and those facts of human
life which seem to make dead against belief in
there being any love of God at all.
I hope I make this point clear, for, really, it

THE SORROWS OF HEB PILGRIMAGE. 69

is a most important one, and ought to be very
helpful to any perplexed mind that earnestly
desires to hold on to faith in the goodness and
loving-kindness of the Power Vv^hich rules the
universe. What I am urging is briefly this, that
if the superiority of the divine intellect to the
human intellect makes many of the Creator's
methods seem to the mind of man self-contra-
dictory which are not really so ; it is only what
we ought to expect if when we pass from the
region of thought to the region ot feeling ^ we dis-
cover that there also are contradictions which it
baflies the heart's best efforts to understand.

God in heaven must be just as much our su-
perior in loving power as He is in thinking
power. If then some of his w^ays of thinking
are too diJHBcult for us to attain unto, why should
not some of the methods of his love, also seem,
upon the surface, to be utterly and hopelessly at
variance with the methods which our human,
and, because human, less powerful hearts would
prefer ?

We are no more competent judges of what it is
possible for God to feel, than we are competent
judges of what it is possible for God to think.
The best we can hope for in our study of J^ature
is that we may get glimpses of his truths and so
also the best we can hope for in our scrutiny of
his dealings with the children of men is that we
may get glimpses of his love. What makes the

70 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

preciousness of the religion which passes under
the name of " the Grospel " is just this, that it
does give us glimpses of the love of God such as
are nowhere else to be had. It is not pretended,
certainly not pretended by intelligent believers,
that in the school of Christ, all difficulties are
cleared up, all mysteries dispelled, — no, our claim
is a much more modest one than that. The
School, we say, is a good one because it teaches
so effectively the great lesson of patience. The
pupils are not promised that they shall know
everything at once. " What I do thou knowest
not now, but thou shalt know hereafter," is the
school motto, and the school badge is the cross.
Thus taught and thus equipped the soul can
meet her sorrows bravely. Bereavement cannot
quench her hope, pain cannot paralyze her faith ;
melancholy cannot blacken her sky. She has
learned that love is stronger than death. She is
persuaded that the lifetime of a planet is not too
long for the working out of a theodicy.
She trusts Christ when He says to her :

" the end of sorrow
Shall be near My throne/'

V.

THE SPLENDOE OF HER DESTINY.

V.

THE SPLEKDOE OF HEE DESTINY.

We are to ponder, this morning, the destiny
of the soul.

Her origin we have already considered, also
her schooling, her warfare and her pilgrimage ;
there remains the question of her final outcome.
To what does all this manifold and multiform
experience lead up? What will she do, what
will she be " in the end thereof " ?

I beg you not to take destiny in the sense of
doom or fate, for that is not at all what was in
my mind when I fastened upon the phrase which
has given title to our meditation.

I pray you, for our present purpose, to think
of destiny simply as that which God in his wise
providence has destined, arranged beforehand,
planned in advance for man. St. Paul in one of
his most precious and comforting sentences speaks
of the things which God has prepared for those
who love Him. A devotional writer of the early
Church caught up the expression, and made it
the preface to a prayer that can never perish.
" O God, who hast prepared for those who love
Thee, such good things as pass man's understand-

73

74 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

ing ; Pour into our hearts such love toward Thee
that we loving Thee above all things may obtain
thy promises." This thought of a certain blessed
preparation made for the future good estate of
man, a happy harbor even now waiting to wel-
come into its quiet shelter the storm-beaten ship,
a home already built and furnished, ample and
stately, a dwelling-place of delight, this is the
thought I should like to amplify and unfold.
Upon the negative side of the matter I see no
need of dwelling. There is a negative side.
Whenever any gracious hand holds out a gift, it
is within one's power to refuse it. The giver
cannot force us to become recipients against our
will. Foolish we may be in our exercise of the
rejecting power, churlish, short-sighted, imprudent
to the very verge of madness, — still the fact re-
mains that we do have the prerogative of con-
trary choice. The Gadarenes set a higher value
on their swine than on the Christ of God; a
single step carries one across the line which
makes the hither boundary of that far country
where God is not.

But why should we confuse the losses which
our own self-will brings upon us with the positive
gains which it is God's will that we secure?
Why speak of perdition as if it were his work of
Whom it is written that He willeth not that any
should perish ? What God does reallj^ will is our
sanctification not our destruction, our upbuilding

THE SPLENDOR OF EEB DESTINY. 75

not our undoing. So then, suppose we under-
stand by " the soul's destiny " that which God
plans and purposes for the soul ; in other words
the best thing that can happen, not the worst.
With the question of the loss of the soul we are
not now concerned, nor yet with the question
Are there few that be saved ? but only with the
question, What is possible for the soul ? What
is open to the soul? To what may the soul
aspire and attain ?

With a view to finding an answer to this
question, suppose we open and look into each one
of the three books, of which I was speaking, the
other day, as being the three great manuals in
use in the school of God, Nature, History and
Prophecy, or, as I called them, the Picture-book,
the Story-book, and the Dream-book.

First of all What has Nature to suggest upon
the subject? Nature suggests better things in
store for the soul in the far future by showing us
the many ranges and grades through which life
upon this planet has already had to pass before
what we now see around us could be reached.
The time was when no life of any sort existed
here. The earth, a huge molten globe, rolled
around in its orbit, untenanted because un-
tenantable. After the planet's crust had so far
cooled as to show the sea and the dry land, God
began planting the seeds of life. The secret of
that process has never been discovered. Guesses

76 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL.

and conjectures we have in plenty but of certain
knowledge nothing. The only point which
stands out clearly is the point of which the
author of the first chapter of Genesis makes so
much, namely, the gradualness of the Creator's
method. First, we have life of a low type in full
possession, then, there supervenes life of a higher
type, then, life of a type higher still, and at last,
after a long, long, waiting, — man. Mixed up
with this whole business there are, of course,
questions innumerable which have furnished and
which will long continue to furnish material for
hot debate. Upon these controverted points I
have no intention of dwelling, for there is no
slightest need of our doing so. I simply em-
phasize the fact now universally acknowledged to
be the fact, that life upon the globe has thus far
been an affair of grades and levels, and that man
is here late-born, many of the types that antici-
pated his type having disappeared and many
others being now in process of disappearing.
"What would seem to be the natural inference
from all this? The natural inference would
seem to be, especially when we take into account
the comparative shortness of the time during
which man has been in possession, the natural
inference, I say, would seem to be that man him-
self is only tenant at will and that in turn he also
will be evicted in order to make room for another
and a stronger. That is as far as Nature leads

TEE SPLENDOR OF HER DESTINY. 77

US on tha^t line, but she has other lines. Take
the organs of sense as they are called, those
marvelous instruments or media by dint of which
the intelligence, whether in brute or man, gets
itself into connection with the outer world, the
universe of sight and sound, these also seem to
suggest possible future creations more marvelous
still. If such amazing organs as the eye and the
ear could gradually be built up from small be-
ginnings why should there not be developed in
future ages, and for a higher order of beings,
senses as much beyond those vf hich we possess in
range and accuracy as ours are beyond those of
insects ? Here again, Nature brings us up to a
certain point, suggests conclusions not flattering
to our vanity, and then leaves us. "Were we
shut up to her prophecies and to hers alone, we
should expect nothing better for man in the
future than extinction, with this questionable bit
of encouragement thrown in by way of con-
solation, that the race which is to succeed and to
replace ours will, in all probability, be every way
stronger and better equipped than we were, of
larger capacity, keener perceptions, more vigor-
ous grasp, in fact, to all intents and purposes a
new order of beings.

But when we turn from Nature to History,
from God's picture-book to His story-book we
get an entirely fresh view of the matter, for now
we find that there has been given to man a

78 FSYCRE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

power of renewal, a capacity for boundless im-
provement, a gift of movement, onward and up-
ward the like of which the brute creation is
utterly unable to show. Not only has man suc-
ceeded in supplementing the deficiencies of his
senses by mechanical inventions like the micro-
scope and the telescope, those wonderful con-
trivances for extending the power of sight in two
opposite directions, — not only so, but he is also
found to have received, at a certain definite point
in the past which we call the Christian Era, a
mysterious spiritual impulse, the effects of which
have already been wonderful beyond all account,
and promise to eventuate in results more wonder-
ful still. The mournful inference, therefore,
which we drew from our glance at the natural
history of the past; namely, that man would
probably disappear altogether, just as the cre-
ations that held possession here before he came
had disappeared, this sad conclusion no longer
binds us. Man is found to have what no one of
them could lay claim to, namely, a power of
growth from within, a gift of rising from level
to level, without in any measure losing the char-
acteristics that make him man.

This inspiriting thought of the undeveloped
possibilities of the human soul, is what lights up
the New Testament with a glory not of earth.
St. John exults in it. " Beloved, now are we the
sons of God," he cries, and then with a wise reti-

THE SPLENDOR OF HEB DESTINY. 79

cence he adds, " it doth not yet appear what we
shall be ; but we know that when He shall ap-
pear we shall be like Him, for we see Him as He
is." "What a refreshing contrast this to the style
of certain modern writers who profess to know
so much more about the details of our future ex-
istence than God's revelation of His purpose tells.
Why should we be so nervously anxious to be in-
formed about particulars ? St. John was willing
to wait, why should not we be willing to wait ?
There is another and a fuller revelation coming
by and by, he says, the hidden Christ is to appear
again, we are to see Him, not in dim shadow, not
under mystic symbol, not parable-fashion and in
enigma, but as He is. Then will our destiny
also appear, with a distinctness not now possible,
— for the seeing Him as He is will, we are as-
sured, make us resemble Him.

The same thought in a somewhat diJBferent form
took a powerful hold upon the intellect and im-
agination of St. Paul.

He puts Christ, you remember, and Adam in
contrast, as representing two entirely different
levels of existence. In Adam all die, that is
Nature ; in Christ shall all be made alive, that is
the higher life which is brought in to save us
from Nature. " The first man Adam became a
living soul, the last Adam became a life-giving
spirit." "As is the earthy such are they also
that are earthy, and as is the heavenly such are

80 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

they also that are heavenly." At bottom, the
two apostles are, you see, completely in accord.
" We shall be like Him," says St. John. " We
shall also bear the image of the heavenly," says
St. Paul. The two utterances are but different
expressions of the one thought, that in Christ
humanity has been lifted up to a higher table-
land to which by its own unaided effort it never
could have climbed, and that a destiny is in store
for the soul the splendor of which can only be
imagined by those who discern in the Son of
Mary the lineaments of the Son of God. We
have summoned two apostles to the witness-stand,
let us call a third. Hear also what St. Peter
saith. " Grace and peace be multiplied unto you
through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our
Lord, according as His divine power hath given
us all things that pertain unto life and godliness
. . . whereby are given us exceeding great
and precious promises, that by these ye might
be partakers of His divine nature."

Here we have three New Testament writers
all bearing testimony to the same point ; namely,
the grandeur of the as yet unrealized possibilities
of the human soul, St. John telling us that we
shall be like Christ for we shall see Him as He is ;
St. Paul predicting a certain marvelous change,
to be effected in the twinkling of an eye, when
this mortal puts on immortality ; St. Peter dar-
ing to use such strong language as I just now

THE 8PLEND0B OF HEB DESTINY. 81

quoted with reference to the lifting up of human
nature until it becomes partaker of the divine.
Thus history and prophecy, the story-book and
the dream-book combine to throw into Nature's
outline-pictures a fulness of color and of mean-
ing, lacking which they would be dismal and
discouraging indeed. Nature does, it is true, pre-
dict progress, but progress of that strenuous sort
which brushes old things aside to make room for
new with a look of absolute indifference. What
cares she for man, when he has played his little
part any more than she cared for the gigantic
reptiles that peopled the earth before man ar-
rived ? She let them go without a pang when
man came, now let man go since his purpose has
been served. " Clear the stage, ye fire and heat,
ye frost and cold, ye seas and floods, clear the
stage, burn out or drown out all mankind, that a
new act of the long drama may begin." This is
the sharp mandate which we seem to hear issu-
ing from Nature's lips ; but, meanwhile, Christ's
followers resting upon the lessons of history and
the intimations of prophecy are bold to keep on
saying to one another in a tone of quiet confi-
dence,— " Nevertheless, — nevertheless, we, ac-
cording to his promise, look for new heavens
and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteous-
ness."

And this suggests, what ought always in such
inquiries as this of ours to be remembered, that

82 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

it is no part of the soul's destiny that she should
be saved alone. The salvation which Christ
promises is a '' common salvation." We are they
who look not for celestial hermitageSj but for a
heavenly city. Nothing in all the dream book of
prophecy is so magnificent as the promise of
the Jerusalem which is above.

Beauty is to be its characteristic. Men's cities,
the best of them, all leave much to be desired.
Each has its own strong point, one is admirable
in this regard, another admirable in that; but
not one of them is there that is altogether admi-
rable. Cain was the first city-builder, and his
mark smirches every city that has been builded
since his day. Just on the edge of the old Jeru-
salem lay Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom, the
receptacle of all that was deadly and putrescent,
the home of carcases and filth, the very type and
synonym of Hell. No great city exists to-day
that has not its valley of Hinnom, its purlieus of
blackness and death. We make brave attempts
to screen it all with our fine architecture, we lay
out our parks and our drives and say, " Behold is
it not beautiful ! " but we know perfectly well
how futile is the endeavor to obliterate the domi-
nant ugliness which curses our best efforts at
city-building. Better things are destined for that
soul in us which so passionately hungers and
thirsts after beauty than these poor attempts.
God, the great architect, is building a city of his

THE SPLENDOR OF HEB DESTINY. 83

own for man, and when it is done we shall know
what real beauty means.

'* Jerusalem high tower thy glorious walls,
Would God I were in thee."

That is the Church's homesick song. Do not
think of it as the utterance of a sentimental
longing devoid of all promise of satisfaction,
think of it rather as a desire prompted by the in-
timations of prophecy and destined to be met, in
God's good time, by a gratification richer and
deeper than we have ever dared to dream.

We need not distress ourselves as to the local-
ity of the eternal city. He who can so marvel-
ously plan, may be trusted to use good judgment
in the choice of a site. I was reading not long
ago a book the author of which took great com-
fort in the belief that heaven, the heaven of the
Bible, and the present home of the ascended
Christ was in the star Alcyone, one of the group
popularly known as the Pleiades. He had worked
it all out, and was apparently almost as clear in
his mind upon the point as if it had been a ques-
tion of the latitude and longitude of London. I
cannot think that speculations of this sort are of
any real value. They interest me no more than
do the somewhat similar endeavors to cipher out
the date of the millenium.

What I want to know about the city is some-
thing,— I am content that it should not be very

84 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

much, — something about the general look of it,
and something about the sort of life that is lived
within its walls. This it has pleased God to tell
me through lips that I can trust. That the city-
is fair I know ; that the city is free I know ; that
the city is holy I know ; that the city is eternal
I know. What lack I yet ? Surely nothing un-
less it be spirit and courage to hold this begin-
ning of my confidence steadfast unto the end,
yes and my vision clear of the sort of city most
to be desired, for it is not after all a sociological
paradise scientifically mapped and administered
by experts that the soul covets for her destiny
but the real heaven of God, our Fatherland in-
deed.

THE CUKE OF SOULS.

THE CUEE OF SOULS.

The Christian religion has its philosophical
side on which it fronts the intellect, and it has
also what we may call its sympathetic side on
which it fronts the affections.

Looked at on its philosophical side Christ's re-
ligion is a disclosure of certain distinct and defi-
nite truths. These truths admit of being stated,
of being put into affirmative sentences, gram-
matical propositions, they can be taught and
learned, and taken in their wholeness they make
up what we know as the Catholic Creed. Just
at present there is a strong disposition in some
quarters to blur and slur this aspect of Christ's
religion, but it cannot be blurred or slurred for
long. Christianity has always professed to be a
religion with a message, and the Church must
cease to be the Church if forced into the confes-
sion that she has nothing to tell. That the ap-
peal of religion to the intellect may be too heav-
ily emphasized, that the importance of correct
thinking in connection with things spiritual may
be cruelly and even absurdly exaggerated is of
course true. Strong-minded men find in the play
of brain-power the same sort of excitation that
athletes have in feats of bodily strength ; they

87

88 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

" drink delight of battle," with their peers ; and
it is no wonder that in days when more men of
strong mind went into the ministry than went
elsewhere, religion should far too often have
come to be reckoned a form of thought only ; a
message to the mind and to the mind alone ; a
thing to be argued for and defended, illustrated,
systematized and explained.

But the Christian ministry has been set here in
the world to do something more than teach.
Man hungers for the bread of knowledge but he
thirsts for the wine of love, and that is but a
mutilated sacrament which gives him the one and
withholds from him the other. Religion has its
sympathetic area, its realm of the affections, its
domain of what is personal as contrasted with
what is impersonal and abstract, and it is here
that we come upon the " cure of souls." Accord-
ing to the Christian conception of the thing, a
minister is one who has had a group or cluster of
persons, — of conscious, thinking, feeling, purpose-
ful and responsible persons authoritatively com-
mitted to his charge for a distinct and definite
purpose, namely, that as persons, each one differ-
ing from every other one, and yet shares all in a
certain common possession which we know as
human nature, they may spiritually be helped
and bettered, watched over and fed. It was in
making provision to this end that our Lord Jesus
Christ more especially disclosed His heavenly am-

THE CURE OF SOULS. 89

bassadorship, gave proof of the divineness of His
mission. He taught truth even as the philoso-
phers before Him had taught it, but He did also
what no philosopher has ever essayed before or
since, He ordained a " Ministry," He chose men
and sent them forth with power, yes, power to heal,
power to help, power to console. Much increment
accrues to the thought of ministers as teachers the
moment we apprehend this further thought of
them as men charged with that higher prerogative,
sympathy.

Few people realize what a large place the prin-
ciple of cure or care holds in the world's life.
Things as well as persons, tend to deterioration
unless they are looked after. If a man builds a
house he must take care of it or it will crumble ;
if he plants a garden he must take care of it or
it will run to weeds, the young of all animals
have to be cared for a little while or they perish ;
and the higher the grade of animal the longer
and more anxious will be the period of care.
Even so it is with the souls of men, they call for
care, watchful, assiduous, patient, loving care.
We were put into this world to help each other.
God's law for nature may be the survival of the
fittest through the struggle for life, but His law
for man, as promulgated through His Son, is tha.t
they who are strong shall bear the infirmities of
the weak." Of this principle, the minister is the
appointed representative. He stands for the

90 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TME SOUL.

truth that men owe one another care or cure, and
only in so far as he in his own person, exempli-
fies the Good Shepherd's watchfulness over the
flock does he deserve his title. There is no harm
in thinking that one reason why the chosen peo-
ple were suflfered in God's providence to become
a pastoral people rather than any other kind of a
people was that this conception of tenderness as
blended with carefulness might become ingrained
into their whole habit of thought, thus making
such a Psalm as the Twenty-third possible and
such a chapter as the Tenth chapter of St. John
intelligible.

We trace the apostolic succession of the good
Shepherds all the way down from Abraham to
Him who alone completely and perpetually em-
bodies the conception. Men they were, full of
generous devotion to the well-being of their
flocks and with that sense of responsibility,
which is the measure of character, never absent
from them. Leaders they were, not drovers ;
" shepherd-kings," but never shepherd-tyrants.
Jacob was such a one, conscientious in the keep-
ing of the flock, "In the day the drouth con-
sumed me," he declares, " and the frost by night."
Moses the great, he also was a shepherd during
one of the reaches of his long career. He was
leading the flock of Jethro on the slope of Horeb
Avhen the call to go after the lost sheep in Egypt
reached him. David as a boy kept the sheep at

THE CUBE OF SOULS. 91

Bethlehem, and when the lion and the bear came
prowling about the fold he slew them. Thus,
gradually, was evolved the type to which the
mission of the Son of God was destined to give
an everlasting significance. And now that He
has come, the great Shepherd of all souls, and
has set upon earth His sheep-fold, men are hav-
ing their eyes open to understand how the whole
human race is potentially His flock. What then
really are those who are called and who call
themselves ministers, priests, clergymen ? Simply
His under-shepherds, that is all. When the title
is searched, when the tokens tarred upon the
fleeces are investigated, we find that all the
sheep belong to but one owner, the Eternal
Father, that they are shepherds but by one shep-
herd, the Eternal Son, and that they who help
Him are but His servants, servants entrusted with
authority, to be sure, servants who have a right
to be respected, not drudges, not menials, but
still in a true sense men acting under commission,
the custodians, not the originators of power, rep-
resentatives, not principals, men sent by one
higher than themselves charged with an errand
and a task. These distinctions are significant
ones. I do not think it is possible to overstate
the dignity of the office of the Christian minister.
I do think it is possible grievously to misstate it.
The real dignity of the office lies in the fact
that it is designed to be symbolical of the work

92 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL.

of Christ Himself. " Feed my sheep/' He says
to Peter, just as he is on the point of taking a
last leave of Him ; — " Feed my sheep." It is not
a general instruction to Simon Peter to take up
the calling of a shepherd, it is a definite and
particular command to attend to his, Christ's
sheep. The minister's function is, therefore, a
representative function, and like every represent-
ative he is bound never to lose out of sight or
out of mind the thing he represents. He must
never, so to speak, set up for himself. Cannot
the origin of all or of almost all of the grievances
which, here or there, at one time or another,
have been alleged against the Christian ministry,
be traced to a forgetfulness of this cardinal
truth ? How comes it that we have in our lan-
guage such a sinister word as " priest-craft " ? H
a priest be a reputable person his craft ought not
to be a disreputable craft. Whence again, such
unpleasantly suggestive phrases as " sacerdotal
assumption," " prelatical tyranny," " hierarchical
pride," and the like ? It is easy enough to at-
tribute the coining of such words to pure spite,
but while that would account for their getting
into circulation it would not account for their
staying in circulation. A far more probable ac-
count of their genesis and of their prevalence is
that they stand for and describe certain very
real and objectionable misrepresentations of
what the ministry was designed by Christ to be.

THE CUBE OF SOULS. 93

Theirs is an entirely false conception of the dig-
nity of the Christian ministry who would have
us suppose that that dignity can be enhanced by
high-sounding titles or by the loud assertion of
spiritual prerogative. The dignity of the min-
istry consists in the fact that it is a service ren-
dered to the sons of men in the JSTame and by
the authority of the Son of God. When we
think of it, the origin of most of what the world
recognizes as distinction is traceable to service
rendered. In monarchical countries, titles are
transmitted by heredity just as estates are, but if
you follow the title back to the day when it was
conferred, yau find that in the first instance it
was earned by service. At a given crisis in the
kingdom's history, on some battlefield, at some
council board, a man made himself specially
useful to the king and was ennobled. Yes, de-
pend upon it, " I serve " is the proudest of all
the armorial ensigns, and the one that best ex-
presses what is most central to the religion of
Jesus Christ.

To the shepherd of the sheep who has in him
the true conception of what his calling imports
any flock that may in the providence of God be
assigned to him is his " beautiful flock," beauti-
ful for the simple reason that it is a flock, and
that, in a sense, it is his. A group of people, a
little company of men, women and children, an
actual family of hmnan souls, to care for, to look

94 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF TEE SOUL.

after, to counsel, to pray for, to extricate from
their troubles, to guide in their perplexities, to
console in their sorrows, to strengthen in faith,
to cheer with hope and to incite to charity, —
what could possibly be more attractive to the
mind's eye than this ? what better deserve that
supreme epithet beautiful ?

How strange it is that more young men of
high spirit and able mind are not drawn toward
a calling which can be so described ! After all,
nothing interests like people. Pope's declara-
tion that " the proper study of mankind is man,"
has become trite just because it is so true. We
rail, and very properly, at what is known as
" gossip," but the one excusable thing about gos-
sip is the humanness of it. That curiosity about
people should surpass curiosity about things is
inevitable. People are, really ever so much more
important than things, and to be more interested in
people than in things is not only not blameworthy,
it is creditable. It is the animus of gossip that
degrades it, not the fact that it has the sayings
and doings of our neighbors for its subject-mat-
ter. People, I say, are interesting just because
they are people, and the charm of the ministry
is that it puts a man into the most sacred of all
possible relations to people. Others may serve
them in a hundred ways, may amuse them, may
instruct them, may kindle their interest in this
or that art or science or adventure, but his is the

THE CUBE OF SOULS. 95

high function, the golden privilege of showing
them which way heaven lies, and helping to start
them on the journey. What could be more
worthy of any man's best effort than such a
task? What form of life work promises any-
thing one-half so good ? The question of the
desirability of different flocks, so often mooted,
sinks into utter insignificance when set alongside
of the high privilege of having any flock at all.
Every parish is a " good parish," which offers to
an earnest man the opportunity of doing good.

Doubtless that minister sustains the ideal re-
lation to his people who knows, personally, inti-
mately knows every single one of them. A beau-
tiful flock, indeed, is that which is so known.
But who is sufficient for these things ? Possibly
the village minister, and therein lies the great
compensating advantage of his position, humble
in the sight of men, it may be, but really enviable
in the eye of any one who appreciates what the
thorough cure of souls involves and demands.

Many years ago it was my privilege to carry a
note of introduction to an English clergyman
who had been settled for a long, long time in a
quiet little village in Somersetshire. I call it a
village, — really it was scarcely more than a ham-
let. It did not look to be more than half the
size of one of the less considerable of our county
farming-towns. Yet there I found the most cul-
tivated and altogether most charming man whom

96 PSYCHE: A STUDY OF THE SOUL.

I had met in Europe, an intellectual thorough-
bred, a scholar to his finger-tips.^ With my crude
and boyish notions of what constituted greatness,
I knew not what to make of such a choice. More
years passed ; and taking up the morning paper,
one day, I found among the items of foreign
news the announcement that my friend of the
little South-of-Engiand rural parish had been
suddenly lifted out of his obscurity, and by the
prime minister's appointment made guardian of
the great cathedral which stands in ''London's
central roar." And yet, when Dean Church
died, they buried him, at his own request, not
where he had a right, in virtue of his office and
his fame, to lie, in the crypt with Wellington
and Nelson ; but in the soil of the modest little
Somersetshire village, where for eighteen years
he had known the happiness which comes of the
thorough as contrasted with the superficial cure
of souls. His beautiful flock, when he came to
look back over the whole stretch of his life's
past, was not that which he had seen gathered
weekly under the huge dome of St. Paul's — for
that he had only looked upon; it was rather
those few sheep in what some had accounted a
wilderness, but which had been to his mind only
the more beautiful in that they had been not
merely collectively beheld, but actually and sev-
erally known and loved.

>The late Very Rev. R. W. Church, D. D.

THE CURE OF SOULS, 97

Such is the pastoral office, the cure of souls, a
benign and gracious thing, as we must needs ac-
knowledge, whether it be looked at from the
minister's or from the people's side.

How privileged the man who has it for his
whole endeavor to make goodness look to his
fellow men more fair, God's service more inviting,
heaven's coast-line more distinct, death's counte-
nance less grim.

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